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Friday, May 24, 2019

When I read the cover blurb for Chis Beckett’s new novel Beneath The World, A Sea, it seemed vaguely familiar. A British policeman is sent to investigate the killings of the indigenous species of the Submundo Delta, the Muendes, whom the local human populace do not consider to be sentient. The Muendes mess with their minds and to make things stranger and the only way into the Delta is through the Zona, a region that wipes any memories of having been there.

Sunday, May 05, 2019

Morhelion follows on from Dominic Dulley’s debut novel, the breezy space opera adventure Shattermoon, bringing back the roguish and mismatched crew of the DaintyJane to mix it up with a new batch of criminal gangs, opportunists, charming conmen and villainous authority figures.

Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Atlas Alone is the fourth novel set in Emma Newman’s Planetfall universe, all of which I have enjoyed and found to be engaging and emotionally charged, with wonderfully complex characters and an intriguing background. Each of the first three novels stands alone and could be read in any order, but this book follows on directly from After Atlas and really needs to be read in the right order.

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

It’s been a long time since a new UK-based print genre magazine has appeared, so I was delighted to discover Visions, which has arrived to fill that void. When I started writing reviews years ago, I particularly concentrated on this type of publication, switching gradually to novel reviews as the magazines disappeared one by one.

Monday, April 15, 2019

Tall Tale TV will be podcasting an episode containing three stories, one each by myself, and my two sons Alex and Haydn!

Alex pitched the idea when the editor said his story was too short to podcast by itself. I've not had many stories podcast, so I'm rather pleased and it will be particularly exciting to hava e whole family podcast to ourselves!

Thursday, April 11, 2019

After the tumultuous events of From Darkest Skies and From Distant Stars, Agent Keon Rause of the Magenta police force is back in full swing, investigating a mysterious high-profile suicide. Working through the aftermath of discovering that his long-dead wife Alysha is actually alive, Agent Rause is attempting to get to the bottom of the on-going conspiracy that has kept them apart for six years.

Friday, April 05, 2019

Rachel Armstrong’s second novel InvisibleEcologies is subtitled Songs of the Ecocene II although, from what I could tell, it is unrelated to last year’s Origamy, which is now volume I of the series. The interesting thing about this series title, I thought, is that actually when you step back and think about what you’ve read, ‘Invisible Ecologies’ takes on the aspect of a song rather than a novel. It’s not written as a song of course, but you end up with the impression of it having been some kind of epic folk ballad.

Sunday, March 24, 2019

Last year’s Martian thriller One Way introduced us to Frank Kittridge, a convicted murderer who was offered a one-way ticket to Mars as part of an all-convict crew who would build a base for NASA’s astronauts to use in the future. It didn’t seem such a bad deal, it would just mean Frank serving out his life sentence on the glorious expanse of Mars rather than a maximum security prison in the USA.

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Dominic Dulley’s debut novel Shattermoon is a non-stop, action-packed space opera that’s full of entertainment and all of the classic ingredients of adventure you might want. On the surface it’s a regular mix of bandits, smugglers and imperial navy ships with a sassy heroine, but it quickly takes on a character and charm of its own.

Saturday, March 02, 2019

Like much of the Science Fiction community, I’ve become very excited about Chinese Science Fiction of late. I read Ken Liu’s first collection of translated works, InvisiblePlanets, and the four Liu Cixin novels that have been translated so far, as well as meeting Liu Cixin for an interview. This new collection BrokenStars, which is both edited and translated by Ken Liu, is a hefty volume of almost 500 pages, including a fabulous selection of stories and some essays on Chinese Science Fiction.

Thursday, February 14, 2019

The first Binti novella was truly wonderful and made a real impression when I first read it. The story constantly challenges the preconceptions of the reader even as it challenges the preconceptions of the characters within it. Binti comes from the Himba tribe in Namibia, a people who rarely leave their homeland and are looked down on by the majority Khoush.

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Thrilled to announce that the audiobook of Putting the Science in Fiction -- narrated by the talented tag-team of Kevin T. Collins and Emily Beresford -- is now available wherever audiobooks are sold. It's more than 11 hours of advice from real-world experts on how to craft more realistic and compelling stories. Plus the hilarious foreword written by Chuck Wendig, of course.

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

To celebrate the centenary of Arthur C. Clarke’s birth, NewCon Press has produced a volume of stories that all contain exactly 2001 words. It’s a fantastic concept, giving rise to a great selection of brief yet entertaining stories but, even with a page count of around 200 pages, that still amounts to rather a lot of stories for me to cover in a single review. Some of the contributions have a definite Arthur C. Clarke feel to them, others reference various of his well-known works, notably ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, and others are just great Science Fiction. There’s a chance that with so much to comment on, I could end up writing this review in 2001 words, too.

Saturday, January 12, 2019

The arrival of an alien intelligence to intervene in Earth’s affairs signals an end to violence, illness and environmental degradation. You would think this would be good news, but a lot of the rich and powerful, as well as the violent and sadistic, are not very happy at all. As force fields spread across the Earth to protect wildlife habitats and weapons become obsolete, the book cycles between numerous characters to see how their lives are affected.Read the rest of my review at SF Crowsnest.